Four days after more than 50 Jewish summer camp participants from France were forcibly removed from an airplane at an airport in Spain, it is still not clear exactly what happened, as dueling narratives of the incident paint starkly different pictures of the sequence of events.
Officials in Spain, France, and Israel have taken to social media to spar publicly, even as witnesses and airline officials dispute whether the youths deserved to be removed from the flight, or whether they were the victims of antisemitism.
Vueling, the low-cost Spanish airline on whose plane the incident happened, has stated that the youths acted recklessly on the plane, mishandling emergency equipment, disrupting the pre-flight safety demonstration, and putting the flight’s safety at risk.
However, numerous testimonies from members of the camp said they were doing nothing more than singing, and stopped immediately after they were warned by the crew, raising accusations that their forced disembarkation was motivated by anti-Jewish bias.
Those accusations were later stoked by the revelation that the captain of the plane, Iván Chirivella, was the aviation instructor who had previously trained two of the terrorists responsible for the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
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Vueling acknowledged Chirivella’s history, but denied any connection to the disembarkation. Chirivella has been cleared of having any knowledge that he was training terrorists at the time.
Video from last Wednesday’s incident showed a woman, said to be the group’s director, being violently pinned down and handcuffed by security agents.
The woman who was arrested and beaten is the director of the Kinneret summer camp.
Fifty Jewish French children, aged 10 – 15, were singing Hebrew songs on the plane.
The @vueling airline crew said that Israel is a terrorist state and forced the children off the aircraft; they… https://t.co/V78PEHB58B pic.twitter.com/HizF6SZoaD
— עמיחי שיקלי – Amichai Chikli (@AmichaiChikli) July 23, 2025
On Saturday, French Foreign Minister Jean-Noël Barrot said he contacted the CEO of Vueling, Carolina Martinoli, to demand an explanation as to why 44 minors and eight adults were removed from flight V8166 on July 23, and whether it was connected to their being Jewish.
“Ms. Martinoli assured Mr. Barrot that a thorough internal investigation was underway and that its findings would be shared with the French and Spanish authorities,” the ministry said.
Barrot has also contacted Spain’s ambassador to France.
France’s Minister for Europe and Foreign Affairs Jean-Noel Barrot leaves after the weekly cabinet meeting at the Elysee Palace in Paris, on April 2, 2025. (Dimitar DILKOFF / AFP)
On Friday, Spain’s transport minister, Oscar Puente, referred to the French Jewish teenagers as “Israeli brats,” in a post on X that was later deleted.
Yad Vashem Spain corrected Puente in a response.
“They are French Jews. Europeans,” the account noted in a post. “Oscar Puente, confusing religious identity with a foreign nationality is antisemitism. While thousands of Jewish families under threat flee Europe each year, a public official is expected to show respect and not incite hatred.”
The Bureau National de Vigilance Contre l’Antisémitisme, a French organization dedicated to fighting antisemitism, also slammed Puente for his post.
“By assigning these young French citizens a nationality they do not possess, and by publicly stigmatizing them with a hostile tone, you have crossed a red line,” the organization said in a letter. “We demand an explanation. And a public apology. Because your words are not a mere slip — they constitute a political, moral, and historical fault.”
A Vueling plane in flight. (CC-BY Vince_Vega, flickr)
Disputing the facts
In a statement released on Thursday, Vueling said that the decision to remove the members of Kineret Camp was due to safety considerations, and was not motivated by anti-Jewish or anti-Israel beliefs.
“The actions of the onboard staff were solely in response to behavior that compromised the integrity of the flight, as well as the safety of the passengers and the operation as a whole,” the statement said. “We categorically deny any suggestion that our crew’s decision related to the religion of the passengers involved.”
In a recorded audio statement shared on Enfoque Judio, Chirivella, the captain of the plane, also said the youths were misbehaving, and that removing them from the plane was the proper protocol.
A spokesman for Spain’s Civil Guard said the agents who removed the youth from the plane were not aware of the group’s religious affiliation.
However, numerous eyewitness accounts from camp members and other passengers on the plane have given a different version of the story in which the campers did nothing out of the ordinary. According to this narrative, the campers were singing Hebrew songs on the plane, but stopped after a flight attendant asked them to.
Julie Jacob, a lawyer representing the Kineret Camp, told i24 News that there was no evidence of any dangerous activity by the youth.
“No act threatening safety has been observed. Vueling’s statements are false, fanciful, and without evidence,” she said Friday.
Several of the campers have required psychological support since the incident took place, she told i24. Jacob plans to file a complaint against Vueling, she added.
Several reports in Jewish media claimed that airline staff members made incendiary statements toward the group, and allegedly called Israel a “terrorist state.” Those claims have not been verified.
The campers and their families have also said that Vueling staff threatened them for using Hebrew, according to Yad Vashem Spain, the local branch of Israel’s Holocaust museum and memorial.
Yad Vashem’s Hall of Names with photos of Holocaust victims and binders with Pages of Testimony (Courtesy)
Karine Lamy, a woman identifying herself as the mother of one of the kids, told i24 that only one of the children had started singing and that after a warning from the crew, the children calmed down and behaved. However, she alleged, security was called anyway and instructed the group to disembark.
She said security personnel then told everyone to place their mobile phones on the floor so videos they recorded could be deleted. According to Lamy, the counselor then objected, saying they had no right to do so, leading to her forcible detainment.
A passenger named Damian, who was not connected to the group, told the Spanish Jewish site Enfoque Judio that he had not seen the group do anything that warranted such harsh treatment.
“Nothing happened that required them to get off,” Damian was quoted as saying. “The kids were polite, calm. They were excited, yes, but they weren’t doing anything wrong. I don’t understand what happened.”
A woman whose 17-year-old son was on the flight told AFP on condition of anonymity that the group was returning home from a two-week summer camp.
She said she “could not see what could have justified” the incident, which affected children as young as 12 and 13. “They were disembarked like dogs,” she said.
Some of the youth were reportedly sporting Jewish symbols such as yarmulkes, tzitzit, and Stars of David.
A video shared by Enfoque Judio showed camp members being instructed by a group leader to hide all religious symbols during their detention for fear of complicating matters.
On Sunday, Yad Vashem Spain called on Vueling to conduct a thorough and unbiased investigation.
“The company has not yet provided a single piece of evidence to support its version of events,” it said in a statement. “It is strange that, at a time when every incident is recorded, especially on an airplane, not a single video or photo has emerged showing the group’s allegedly dangerous behavior,” particularly given the contradictory versions of the story, it added.
As of Thursday, all of the detained campers and staff were said to have returned to their destinations in France, Israel’s Foreign Ministry said. The ministry, along with the Israeli embassy in Madrid, “maintained continuous contact” with authorities at the airport following the incident, it said Thursday in a Hebrew-language statement.
Historical precedents
On Friday, Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli noted that Vueling had confirmed that the airplane’s pilot was the flight instructor of two of the 19 terrorists who carried out the 9/11 attacks by al-Qaeda against the United States in 2001.
The Twin Towers of the World Trade Center burn, after hijacked planes crashed into them in New York on September 11, 2001, as part of a plot by al-Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. (AP Photo/Diane Bondareff, File)
“Reality surpasses all imagination,” he wrote on X.
Chirivella’s connection with the 9/11 attackers has been well documented over the years, including in his own 2003 book, “Innocent Accomplice.”
While Chirivella was well paid by the terrorists, Marwan al-Shehhi and Mohamed Atta, he has been cleared of any connection with them or prior knowledge of the attack. Ostensibly, the connection between the two events is merely a coincidence, Vueling indicated.
Antisemitic sentiments have skyrocketed around the world since Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023. Spain has been singled out as one of the worst offending countries.
The number of antisemitic incidents reported in the country has risen nearly six-fold since 2022, according to a recent report by the Antisemitism Observatory, a joint initiative of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain and the Movement Against Intolerance.
Agencies contributed to this report.
